TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Feathered T Rex

The last time I checked, even elephants liked their water holes.The fact remains that all creatures do better
with insulation simply to prevent over heating in the first place.Large animals need a cooling strategy if no
insulation is available and even then if it gets way too hot.That usually means producing no effort during
the day.

Thus if is surely a certainty that the principle adaptation that
allowed the dinosaur to leave the swamps was the adoption of insulation.The usable temperature range is much wider
while the night airs allowed for a period of high activity.

Here we discover that a T.Rex derivative was feathered and certainly
could use cold weather well in the same way that the wooly mammoth
prospered.I am inclined to think
scales and feathers were an either/or proposition but much more readily
switched than we presently understand.

In fact, I suspect that an excellent experiment to conduct would be to
subject a small scaled reptile that reproduces rapidly to a survivable but
colder than normal temperature regime to see if the appropriate DNA switching
takes place with their offspring.This
would be an elegant way to investigate the evolutionary process.

Newly Discovered Close
Relative of T. Rex Is Largest Known Feathered Dinosaur

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5,
2012) — Palaeontologists have known for more than a decade that some small
dinosaurs had bird-like feathers, mainly thanks to beautifully preserved
fossils from northeastern China. Now three specimens of a new tyrannosauroid from
the same region show that at least one much larger dinosaur had a feathery coat
as well.

The name of the new New Speciespecies,Yutyrannus
huali, means "beautiful feathered tyrant" in a combination of Latin
and Mandarin. The three specimens were collected from a single quarry in
Cretaceous beds in Liaoning Province, and are described by Chinese and Canadian
scientists in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"The feathers of
Yutyrannus were simple filaments," explained Professor Xu Xing of
Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the lead
author of the study. "They were more like the fuzzy down of a modern baby
chick than the stiff plumes of an adult bird."

The researchers estimate that
an adult Yutyrannus would have been about 9 metres long and weighed about 1400
kg, making it considerably smaller than its infamous relativeTyrannosaurus rex but
some 40 times the weight of the largest previously known feathered dinosaur,
Beipiaosaurus. The large size of Yutyrannus and the downy structure of its
feathers would have made flight an impossibility, but the feathers may have had
another important function – insulation.

"The idea that primitive
feathers could have been for insulation rather than flight has been around for
a long time," said Dr Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian palaeontologist involved
in the study. "However, large-bodied animals typically can retain heat
quite easily, and actually have more of a potential problem with overheating.
That makes Yutyrannus, which is large and downright shaggy, a bit of a
surprise."

The explanation may be
climate-related, the researchers say. While the Cretaceous Period was generally
very warm, Yutyrannus lived during the middle part of the Early Cretaceous,
when temperatures are thought to have been somewhat cooler.

The gigantic T.
rex and its closest relatives, by contrast, lived in the warm conditions
of the Late Cretaceous. Isolated patches of preserved skin from these animals
show scales, not feathers, but the possibility that even they were partly
feathered cannot be completely ruled out.

"Yutyrannus dramatically
increases the size range of dinosaurs for which we have definite evidence of
feathers," Professor Xu said. "It's possible that feathers were much
more widespread, at least among the meat-eating dinosaurs, than most scientists
would have guessed even a few years ago."

About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.